


Photographic Evidence

by beltainefaerie



Category: Sherlock (TV), Sherlock Holmes & Related Fandoms
Genre: Erotic Photography, First Kiss, M/M, Multi, Nude Modeling, Nude Photos, Past polyamorous relationship
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-04
Updated: 2018-12-04
Packaged: 2019-09-07 08:54:11
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,055
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16851034
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/beltainefaerie/pseuds/beltainefaerie
Summary: Photographs scattered across the floor... along with John's preconceived notions.





	Photographic Evidence

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks to tiger_in_the_flightdeck and janto321for betaing. You always make my writing shine brighter!
> 
> I started this at the last 221b Con, then got caught up in my fandomtrumpshate fic. Remember comments and kudos feed my muse, and I could use something encouraging as the great Tumblr implosion is making me sad.

Tidying up, John picked up the book of poetry from beside Sherlock’s chair. He’d never known Sherlock to read poetry, though he hadn’t known him to read popular Women’s Interest magazines until he found a large stack of them tucked behind the coat rack. Apparently some of the information in them is more useful to casework than the solar system. He flipped the book open, half expecting some case notes to fall out, but instead he saw that the front inside cover was inscribed: 

_Sherlock, we’ll always have Paris. Read page 26 first.  
xxx V_

Of course curiosity got the best of him and John tried to turn to page 26, but in his haste, he knocked loose an envelope that had been tucked under the back cover. Photographs scattered across the floor. 

He bent down and began to gather up the prints but stopped short, plucking one up. _This belongs in a fucking art museum._

A slightly younger Sherlock lay propped on his side on a dais, among silver and aubergine pillows. A vine of ivy twined through his curls along with blossoms of hellebore and dahlia, a swath of deep green silk artfully sweeping over his hip to pool on the ground in front of him. It might have been there for modesty, if only it had managed concealed more of his cock, flushed and, _Christ_ , leaking. 

John swallowed hard, feeling suddenly lightheaded, and reached in to adjust himself. If he hadn’t been alone, he would have tried shifting things from the outside. And he wished he had done, because, of course, it was at that moment Sherlock arrived, in a swirl of coat and manic energy. 

“At first the case seemed barely worth the effort of leaving the flat, but that was before I knew the gardner was actually the boy’s fath--” Sherlock turned from hanging up his coat and glanced from John’s hand to the book to the floor and finally to John’s face.

“I was just,” John began, pulling his hand out of his damn pants, unsure of how that sentence could possibly have ended that didn’t make him look like both a nosey parker and like a damn perv.

Sherlock didn’t seem offended. Stepping closer he offered, “Sensual Artistry, I think they called it. A local painter and photographer offered joint classes utilizing the same studio and models. It paid well enough. And apparently still lives up to its name,” he added with an enigmatic smile.

 _Of course he couldn’t have just ignored that._ John smiled back wryly with a little shake of his head, his cheeks warming further. 

“Is that your favorite?”

“I hadn’t really looked. It had all just...just happened,” John stammered.

Sherlock crouched down and gathered the scattered prints and looked up at John, meeting his eyes with unexpected heat. “You can look at the rest if you’d like. I don’t mind.” His voice was hushed and low, conveying an invitation to much more than viewing at photography.

John drew a breath and let it out in a ragged sigh. He licked his -suddenly dry- lips and opened his mouth to speak. When his voice failed him, he reached out and took the pictures. They sat together on the couch, close enough that John could feel the warmth of Sherlock’s thigh even through his jeans.

Some were classic art poses, others more modern. Some full color, others sepia or black and white. Sometimes the same image repeated in various tones. John didn’t know the first thing about photography, but he knew these were gorgeous. In the first, Sherlock’s lean, pale back dominated the frame, with his head turned to look back over his right shoulder, revealing the lines of his jaw and sharp cheekbone in contrast to the tousled whirls of his dark curls. The next had a different man, golden skin and tawny hair, more tightly curled than Sherlock’s. He was draped in classic toga, hands planted in front of him as he knelt on a carpet of green velvet. He leant over a great round mirror on the ground, as though looking into a pool, swathes of green fabric softening the edges of it to create the illusion of plant life. He gazed intently, almost longingly at his reflection.

“Narcissus,” Sherlock rumbled beside him. “They teased me a bit. That I should have modelled that one.” 

John’s face hardened imagining people mocking Sherlock. Again. But as he looked up, Sherlock was smiling at the memory. Not malicious, then. John tried to picture Sherlock engaging in that kind of gentle teasing in his youth, and relaxed again. He slipped the photo to the back of the stack and drew an awed breath at the next close up. The pale curve of arse and the golden hued hand clutching at a pale hip. Clearly Sherlock and ‘Narcissus’.

“There are a few others in that series. Obviously the painters kept their work, but they made extra prints of the photographs if we wanted them. In this set the painters were getting the whole image while the photographers were practicing closeups. I think they were separated when they scattered, though.” 

Sherlock took the photographs from John’s hands, their fingers brushing slightly. It felt electric. John willed his breathing to stay normal as he watched Sherlock shuffle through the pictures, rearranging them so related images were grouped together again, then handed them back. 

He leaned in to look at them with John, so close that John could feel the warmth from each puff of breath falling softly on his neck. Between the sensation and the image before him, John’s cock, which had softened in the interim, made itself known once more. 

Closeup of their faces. The other man’s cheeks and chin was rough with stubble, but Sherlock’s skin was smooth. The contrast was effective.Their lips were slightly parted, their mouths only a hair’s breadth apart from one another. One had the sense that they had only broken apart to catch their breath and any second would be back to kissing. It was breathtaking. 

John’s eyes were wide as he turned to Sherlock. His smile said there was more to see and nodded for John to continue. 

Another was just twined legs and feet, the hard muscled calves and thighs unmistakably male. 

Lastly, they’d been repositioned, the two men laying on backs, head to foot, but only framed from their swollen lips to mid thigh, entirely over-draped with the sheer fabric, casting them both in an unearthly green light. 

The next was heavily pregnant woman with a cascade of wavy red hair. The swell of her breasts was visible, but her nipples were covered in a scarf of blue velvet. A scattering of delphiniums, some pale blue and others so dark they edged past indigo and into purple, fell across her torso. She looked like a goddess.

In the following image, ‘Narcissus’ curled around behind her, holding her close, his hand cupping her hip as it had Sherlock’s in the earlier series. In the final image, Sherlock joined them. He was curled in front of her, his arms twined about her leg and head pillowed on her thigh. The flowers were scattered over him as well. 

“Victor’s wife, Isabella. She had their daughter a week later.” There was something almost wistful in Sherlock’s tone. “The one with Isabella alone is framed in their bedroom.” 

John gasped at the next image and his cock throbbed. Sherlock was arched over a footstool, head thrown over the edge. The other man, Victor he supposed, though John still thought of him as Narcissus, knelt up beside him. Once again they were draped with fabric in a way that accentuated rather than obscured. This time the fabric was white cotton, evoking a debauched tangle in the sheets. Their positioning, suggested a blowjob without being overtly pornographic.

The last was the three of them again. Isabella leaned back on a mountain of soft cushions, her head thrown back in pleasure. Sherlock was face to face with her, their lips nearly touching, his hand cupping the curve of her swollen belly while Victor’s tight curls were just visible at the bottom, framed by her spread thighs. John couldn’t help the hushed, “Christ,” that spilled from his lips. 

Sherlock smiled. “It was a lovely day, though hard to hold that pose for too long. Luckily if we fell out of position the artists could finish painting from the photographs as reference. The class was nicely structured that way. Of course a few were there for the titillation of it, but most were serious artists. Several went on to have gallery shows locally and in one case abroad as well. “The class had one more session after their daughter was born, with just me. Then it was time for school to start again. I headed back to England. Victor and his family returned to their lives. We wrote for awhile. They sent me the book and a few pictures to add to the collection.”

The last picture was different in all aspects. It was saturated with color, Victor and Isabella and a small girl with a halo of red curls crawling on the picnic blanket. 

“I can’t believe they named her Wilhelmina after me. Ghastly. I think she’d have preferred Sherlock, honestly.” 

John couldn’t tell if he was serious or not, but stifled his giggle.

Sherlock nodded. “It’s true. She goes by Mina apparently. Decent choice all things considered.”

“What happened? After that summer, I mean?”

“Not much. We drifted apart. They had their daughter to take care of, I had school. Then came my difficulties with certain substances and after that the Work. We met up once after that summer, when I was clean. Isabella was more reticent to share Victor after the baby came, though. More conservative. Like our tryst was really the last moments of carefree youth and she needed to fit some “mother’ image. Tedious. She was smarter than that, but sometimes preconditioning kicks in. She and Victor had a row over it, but not a serious one. Well, not serious in terms of their relationship. It just wasn’t time for us anymore. After that it’s been the occasional letter and Christmas card.” 

“I’m sorry,” John murmured, not knowing what else to say. 

“I’m not,” Sherlock said matter of factly. “Obviously it was enjoyable. We liked each other. Loved, even. I wouldn’t have minded continuing, but we lived far apart, I had the Work to occupy myself and obviously if she was jealous then, that would only worsen over time. I have the memories, the pictures. And of course, the exploration of the interplay of love, sex, and jealousy obviously helped me understand certain motives better.”

John shook his head chuckling lightly. “Of course you find the rational side. I’m not sure what I expected.”

“I didn’t always, but it was a long time ago. Besides, it means that right now, I am wholly unattached. Like you. And quite amenable to anything you’d like to suggest,” he said, with a meaningful glance at John’s lap.

John licked his lips. “Oh, I wouldn’t say I’m unattached.”

Sherlock looked momentarily hurt, then alarmed, then unspeakably sad all in the space of a single heartbeat and John hastened to amend, “I was flirting, love. I _am_ attached, to you. You might have noticed I’ve stopped dating anyone even casually. Nothing was likely to work out very well when even my girlfriends could see I’ve been hopelessly gone on you for some time. So yes, if you care to come to bed, I do have a few suggestions. But first,” John set aside the book and photographs, and leant in to kiss Sherlock. His lips were just as soft and warm and inviting as John knew they’d be and when he parted his lips allowing John entrance their kiss was utterly perfect, as though their bodies already knew one another. John had had enough first kisses with people to appreciate the rarity.

When they pulled back, Sherlock looked soft and unguarded. John took his hands. “We’ve been dancing around each other for ages, haven’t we?”

“I had deduced that leaving the book out might have some effect, but this is better than I had dared to hope.”

“Come to bed.” 

And for once, Sherlock followed John’s lead.


End file.
